Scarlett
by Rosalie Sands
Summary: Alternate timeline starting after the events of the first movie. In Adila's point of view, there was no evil sorcerer, no sweet princess or brave hero. There was her father and the powerful couple who publicly executed him in front of her 7-year-old scarlett eyes. This story isn't supposed to change your feelings towards any of these characters. It just sets a new perspective.
1. Chapter 1

\- Daddy... we shouldn't have returned...

\- Calm down, my little ruby. It's been seven years now. Nothing is going to happen.

\- But daddy...

\- Shush, Adila. We are always hiding, remember?

She looked at her father's eyes, scared, her trembling lower lip hidden behind the black cloth. Jafar sighed and took the seven-year-old in his arms.

\- Don't worry, Adila. Nothing is going to happen to me and you. Do you trust me?

The girl nodded and her father put her back in the ground. Her tiny reddish eyes met a meat esfiha between all the food in that tent. Her small, yet trained hands quickly pulled the esfiha and hid it in her burka. She was about to swallow it down when she heard her father behind her back.

\- Hide!

The girl quickly turned around to see her father's worried expression and a bunch of guards in a distance.

\- I told you we should-

\- Now, Adila! – Jafar interrupted his daughter in a serious tone, and the raven-haired girl rushed to the back of the tent.

The girl put her tiny head out and trembled as she watched the soldiers arrive and arrest her father. She crawled back to her hiding position and tried her best to tap her ears so she wouldn't hear her father being badly beaten up by the guards. Tears rolled through her cappuccino skin as she prayed for Allah that someone would help her father.

After a while, the guards got enough of beating Jafar and started dragging him through the street. Adila got up and started following them from a distance. She catched a quick glimpse from her father's face. Those soldiers had no mercy.

It took Adila a while to notice where they were going. They dragged Jafar to the town's main square. He was going to be executed. Realization hit her so strong, she thought she'd vomit right there.

So she recognized someone come out from the crowd. It was the Sultaness, Jasmine. Adila herself had never met her in person, only by posters. And by her father. She knew Jafar had tried to usurp the throne from Jasmine, and to be fair, she didn't think he was wrong at all. Of course, she was only seven, she didn't know anything at all about politics, but right now, appearing in public, Jasmine appeared to be so superficial and to know as much about ruling a kingdom as Adila herself. But the fact was Jasmine ended up winning, and now Jafar had to hide. All because of her.

The soldiers held Jafar in the floor with his face down, and Jasmine walked in their direction. Adila took a while to notice the sword in the Sultaness' hands. The crowd applauded, and the girl covered her mouth and watched in horror as Jasmine chopped her father's head out. She hid behind a wall and cringed, the people chearing her father's death.

She took one last look at her father's decepated head, turned around and disappeared into the night.

* * *

He heard a weird, muffled noise from behind his cart. As he stopped to check it, a tall, sculptural figure ran away in a considerable distance. Her long, raven hair was put down in a long braid. The robe she worn was black as the night, as her own raven hair. She also had a black veil covering a part of her hair and face. He tried to run after her, but couldn't keep up. After noticing that all she stole was food, he imagined she was just some orphan who had no one, and decided to let her go.

* * *

Adila rushed through the narrow streets of the town and disappeared in a corner. She quickly escalated the wall and jumped inside a hole in the old bulding's roof. Relieved, she sat down in a corner of the abandoned house and opened the bag with the food she stole. The smell of the esfihas made her tongue tremble, and she swallowed two at once.

She had ran all day looking for food and provisions to steal, and now her back could finally lie against the cold wall, the bones in her spine almost touching the concrete through her thin skin. She was just exhausted.

She had wasted the past 14 years of her life like this, living on her own in that empty piece of nothing, surviving by pickpocketing and stealing food from carts. Ever since her father was publicly executed when she was just 7, there was no one she could go to.

Adila didn't know her the woman who gave her birth. When her father was still alive, he'd say her mother was "a seducer who consoled his soul when no one else did", but who couldn't keep her daughter "because the kind of work wasn't compatible to having children", and instead handed the baby for Jafar to raise. There wasn't a single occasion when he spoke her name.

Only when she was already a teenager she understood what he meant.

Several times Adila had observed Agrabah's brothel from afar, wondering if the woman who gave her life was still working there. Wondering if the Sultan, who Adila noticed to go to the house with quite a frequency, knew who she was, and about her daughter with his late enemy. Wondering if she ever had other children. If she gave them up as she did to her.

But time passed and that stopped mattering. She didn't have a mother. She didn't need one. She handled living on her own. She didn't need anyone, for that matter. Especially the people of Agrabah.

Words would fail to explain the hatred she felt against this people, this hatred which filled her heart completely. She'd always remember that day when she found herself completely alone, desperate, and without knowing what to do or where to go, while every single person in the town cheered her decapitated father. She'd always remember how they praised the Sultaness, that exhibicionist brat who had turned her father's death into a public show. And because of whom Adila now had to live in the shadows, hoping for the sake of her own survival that no one ever found out that she existed, and was Jafar's daughter.

She sighed deeply as she turned to her right sad and lied down, her eyes facing the peeling wall. She hadn't been this tense ever since the day when tragedy struck.

She closed her eyes and pictured what would happen the following day. She would go to Agrabah's palace and she would apply to the job as a maid there. She would claim to have just arrived from another city. She'd charm her way into getting this job.

And, for the first time in her life, she would meet Jasmine, her father's murderer, face to face.


	2. Chapter 2

The sunlight peered through the window's broken glass directly to Adila's face, and she grunted as she proceeded to cover them with the black cloth of her veil.

She felt oddly uneasy that morning, as if whatever she chose to do from now on would change everything and everyone... not necessarily in a good way. The worse part of that thought? It was true.

Struggling with ever muscle she had, she got up and proceeded to wash her face in one of the old sinks which somehow still had a water flow. Now that she was stopping to think about, that would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Many people all over the East, not even only in Agrabah, dying from heat strokes and thirst... and meanwhile, there was a perfectly good flow of clean water in a building that had been abandoned for almost 20 years in the middle of nowhere.

Breathing deeply, she stared at her own ruby eyes in the dirty mirror. "You can do it", she told herself. "You have to."

That was the moment she had lived for. The one thing that kept her going on with that miserable life of hide-and-seeking. She had been preparing for that every single day of her life since Jafar's execution.

"So what if it goes wrong?", she asked her reflection. She never had a backup plan. She raised herself to do one thing, and one thing only – avenging her father's death. And if it didn't go as planned... everything would have been in vain. Her life would have been in vain. Everything would be even worse.

Or would it? She already lived as a plagued dog, stealing for a living, unknown and unnoticed by everyone, constantly hiding. A reject, living in a rejected house, eating rejected food. Could things really get worse from that?

"To hell with fear, I don't have anything to lose on this." She told herself while landing her fists heavily in the sink, almost breaking it. "I'm taking everything from them. From all of them."

Adila then reached behind the loose mirror and grabbed the choker she hid there. She then proceeded to wrap it around her neck, a single ruby dangling from the black leather. After arranging her hair into a side braid, she unfolded her black abaya and pressed it against her body, admiring the grayish details swirling in the sleeves and chest.

For a few seconds she just stood in that position, admiring her curves and stunning ruby eyes, her crimson lips crooked in a mischievous smile. What was she even worried about ealier?

It took her about five seconds to snap out of that trance, quickly throw the stolen abaya on, and head out to the Palace.

* * *

\- I have to say, miss Ahmad, you might be the best candidate we had here today.

\- Thank you, cid.

\- Between us – I believe the job is already yours.

\- Really? That's so exciting! As I said, I really need this job.

\- ...

\- Umm... is... something the matter, cid?

\- Oh? Oh no, no. It's just... these reddish eyes of yours. They're just mesmerizing.

\- Oh! Believe me, I actually get that a lot.

\- Well, good luck, miss Ahmad. We'll inform you later about the job.

\- Thank you, cid. Ma'a salama!

* * *

\- Look at her. – The girl in the left said. – Red eyes. Isn't it weird?

\- It is. - The girl in the right answered. – I don't want to stare, but I can't help it.

\- Please, Vina. - the girl in the left rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed. – It's not that special. It's just freaky.

Adila smiled to herself, wondering if that two knew she could hear them perfectly from across the room.

Finally, after what seemed like na eternity, Padma came out of the interview room.

\- Ladies, the Sultaness and I came to a decision.

Every girl in the room stood up, hoping that they were the chosen ones.

\- The chosen ones are...

Even Adila was completely tensed up. That was the moment.

\- Vina al-Khader.

In the other side of the room, one of the two girls from earlier couldn't help herself from jumping in excitement.

\- And...

Adila's heart momentarily stopped as she waited for the answer which would change everything. She could feel every fraction of second crawling in her cappuccino skin. This was it.

\- Adila Ahmad.

* * *

\- Are you nervous? – the girl asked, to which Adila only nodded.

\- I've never seen her personally. – she lied. – Or any royalty, for that matter.

\- You're not from here, are you?

\- No.

\- I figured. You'd know her if you were from Agrabah. She's a... very public person, you know?

Adila tried her best to hold her laughter. "Public person" was a pretty gentle way to say how pretentious Jasmine was.

\- Regardless, people here really love her. – the girl, Vina, continued. – And everyone likes it that she and Sultan Aladdin share their personal life with us. I guess it shows that they care.

"Or that they've taken _panem et circenses_ to a whole new level", Adila thought to herself.

\- If they don't hide from their people, that must mean they care enough, right? You don't let someone you don't trust enough judge you. – she said, hoping that the irony in her voice wasn't too obvious.

\- You're right, I think. – Vina said, her almond eyes staring the door. – Still, I'm so excited for this. I really needed the job. And good or bad... who doesn't want to serve in the Sultaness' court?

\- I know. I'm really thrilled too! – Adila let out a small crooked smile, and immediately took it back. Fortunately, Vina didn't seem to notice.

Vina was about to say something when the door knob made a quick movement. Both girls froze in place, and the knob moved again, this time a bit slower. Adila suddenly feel every hair in her body go up in anxiety as she watched the door open silently. Finally, the tan lady entered the room, her raven hair graciously swirling in her back, closed the door behind her, and gave a warm smile to both girls.

The eyes, the big brown eyes. Adila would never forget the anger in these very eyes when they looked at her father right before murdering him.

The Sultaness' eyes. Jasmine's eyes.


End file.
